


Six Times Doctor Rodney McKay Got Chocolate Kisses

by Losyark



Series: Rodney's Numbers [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: AU, F/M, Mary Sue, ish, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-18
Updated: 2007-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-12 05:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Losyark/pseuds/Losyark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney McKay's most significant social interaction continues to be with his barista.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Times Doctor Rodney McKay Got Chocolate Kisses

One:   
  
“Oh god, oh, god,” Rodney accused, pointing a sharp finger and a sharper glare at Sheppard’s nose, “You’re trying to Kirk her.”  
  
“What?” Sheppard sort of yelped in a manly way.  
  
Rodney hissed across the table, “Jennifer is my barista and when she comes back from the counter I would kindly appreciate it if you stop treating her like one of your alien love-priestesses!”  
  
“Rodney, I’m not--”  
  
“Oh, don’t give me that!” Rodney snapped. “I caught the raised eye brows, the little pout, the ’Oh, animation, that is so interesting , tell me about it!’ routine.”  
  
Sheppard frowned. “Girls like it when you’re interested in them, Rodney, I’m trying to fill the awkward silences for you. I’m on your side, buddy.”  
  
The fingers that had been dancing nervously up the side of the coffee cup now tapped along the checker-board table top with the rhythm of long forgotten warm-up scales. “Listen, Jennifer is my girlfriend, and--”  
  
“No she’s not,” Sheppard pointed out.  
  
Rodney scowled. “Fine. She is my imaginary girlfriend and I have spent a whole year in another galaxy fantasizing about her--”  
  
“T.M.I., Rodney.”  
  
“—and you’re not getting your grubby, flyboy, I’m-gonna-go-blow-myself-up-with-a-nuke-with-only-a-so-long-Rodney hands on her!”  
  
Sheppard blinked. “You still mad about that?”  
  
“Yes!”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I’m sorry?”  
  
“... fine.”  
  
When Jennifer got back from the counter, she handed Rodney his cinnamon bun and Sheppard a tuna salad sandwich, and then plopped down a box of candies.  
  
“They look like Kisses, but they’re not,” she said. “Cheap Starbucks knockoffs.”  
  
“Chocolate!” Rodney said gleefully, not caring at all about the quality because it was chocolate.  
  
“Don’t have that out there either?” Jennifer said. “Out in...?”  
  
“Away,” Sheppard said. “Can’t tell you.”  
  
Jennifer shrugged and picked off the icing on Rodney’s cinnamon roll and popped it into her mouth before he could.  
  
The boys decided to play chess on the table top with change and not-kisses. It was an intense game, mathematician versus astrophysicist, and Jennifer sat back and drew sketches of them with crinkled, concentrating foreheads.  
  
Sheppard kept calling his pawns puddlejumpers and Rodney’s darts.  
  
“Why am I the Wraith?” Rodney whined when he came back with their third round of coffees balanced between wide fingers. (His was with half a shot of vanilla and frothed 2 percent milk, but it was made wrong and it didn’t taste as good as Jennifer’s.)  
  
“You’re tall and pasty,” Sheppard said, and even though she didn’t understand, Jennifer laughed at his joke.  
  
It made something in Rodney’s gut twist.

* * *

Two:   
  
Jennifer liked sci-fi too. Rodney liked it because he could mock the ‘science’, and Jennifer liked it for the colours and the costume designs.  
  
Luckily there’s almost always something sci-fi playing at the movie theatre any given time of year, so it wasn’t hard to pick a movie. Rodney had no plans, Sheppard had to go back to the Mountain for some training courses to go with his shiny new title, and Jennifer ‘called in sick’ for the week.  
  
They went to an afternoon show at the local mall and Rodney felt like a big, stupid, fourteen year old again. He knocked his neighbour in the head with an elbow when he tried the ‘yawn-and-stretch’ routine. The glare from the man made Rodney quickly put both his hands back into his lap.  
  
He tried to reach for the popcorn at the same time as her, to make their hands brush the way they had a year earlier (and that Rodney still thought about sometimes), and she stopped and let him go first.  
  
They shared a large diet cola (“I swear, it just tastes better,”) and the slightly waxy residue of her chocolate-flavoured lipgloss on her straw was as close to kissing her as Rodney figured he’d get, so he savoured it.

* * *

  
Three:  
  
Rodney had a lot of money sitting in his back account – cause really, what was there to buy in the Pegasus galaxy? – so he took her to a fancy place that was meant for rich tourists, and stumbled over the wine list, got pasta sauce on his chin, and nearly went into anaphylactic shock.  
  
Jennifer plucked the cream tart out of his hand seconds before it got to his mouth. He glared at her for taking away his desert. She glared back, chewing silently until she had swallowed all of the first bite of her own tart.  
  
“Lemon zest,” she said, and Rodney immediately went pale.  
  
Both tarts sat abandoned on Jennifer’s plate as Rodney McKay bitched out the entire serving staff of the restaurant and enlightened them on the concept of listing all the ingredients of a dish in the menu, even the garnishes.  
  
When their meal had been entirely refunded and the staff were by turns embarrassed and furious, and bringing them free chocolate cake to make up for it, Rodney sat back down and buried his face in his hands. “You hate me,” he said.  
  
Jennifer laughed gently. “Why should I hate you?”  
  
“I’m loud and angry and a total klutz, and all I do is piss people off.”  
  
“There’s nothing wrong with speaking your mind,” Jennifer countered. “And you were right to yell at the staff. They should list lemon on the menu.”  
  
Rodney dared to peek between his fingers. “Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah,” she said. “And you’re not loud and angry, and... okay, well, yeah, you are, but in an amusing way.”  
  
Rodney wasn’t sure that was a compliment, so he repeated, “Amusing?”  
  
“It’s funny. I like to watch you bitch out stupid people. They’re my number one pet peeve. They shouldn’t be allowed to breed.”  
  
Rodney perked up a bit. “Yeah? You hate stupid people.”  
  
“I worked at Starbucks,” Jennifer said, as if it explained everything. “For five years.” Rodney thought about the kind of people who work at Starbucks – people in between other jobs, biding time and making money, or people who can’t get better ones.  
  
He thought about annoying morning, pre-caffeinated customers and jerks who wanted their coffee just so. Jerks like him.  
  
“I see,” Rodney said. “I get that.” He looked down at his hands. The chocolate cake arrived and Rodney picked at it morosely. “But you flirted with Sheppard.”  
  
The breadroll pinging against his forehead was entirely unexpected. He looked up and found Jennifer on the verge of laughing herself silly. She kept the volume low, though.  
  
“What?” Rodney said, vaguely annoyed now. Why was she laughing at him?  
  
“I flirted with Sheppard because I couldn’t flirt with you,” she said. “And believe me, I tried.”  
  
“You did?”  
  
“Yes, Mr. Oblivious. And don’t think I didn’t notice the popcorn-hand or the yawn-and-stretch today too.”  
  
Rodney was mortified. “Ah, I... uh... I’m sorry.” He floundered for a moment, not sure what to say next, and then decided on truth: “I’m not so good at this ‘girl’ thing, okay? If you were a complex quadratic equation I’d know how to handle you. Science is easy – there’s steps to follow and procedures and one right answer and you can go back and do it all again and nothing will change. Girls are hard because there’s never a right answer and even if there is, it only works on one girl and you have to learn a whole new set of equations for the next one and you should eat your tart.”  
  
“No,” Jennifer said. She took a healthy sip of her wine and swished it around in her mouth and swallowed like it was mouthwash.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Cause then I couldn’t do this,” and she leaned across the table and kissed him.  
  
She tasted like wine and cake.

* * *

Four:   
  
Kissing was nice, Rodney concluded after their third day in a row together. Kissing was very very nice. This time they were sitting on a bench in the park. They were eating icecream and Jennifer’s had begun to melt down her chin so he had swooped in and taken care of it before it could stain her blouse, and he was rather proud of the suavity of the move.  
  
When they broke apart, Jennifer’s lips were swollen and her eyes wide and dark.  
  
“Wouldn’t want to waste chocolate,” Rodney explained. “Very hard to get chocolate where I work. It’s rarer than good coffee. More rare,” he corrected himself automatically.  
  
“Wouldn’t want to waste it,” Jennifer agreed and dropped her chocolate icecream cone on the ground so she could use both hands to grab his ears and haul him back down for another kiss.

* * *

  
Five:  
  
Friday afternoon, Rodney went to Jennifer’s apartment to pick her up for their last date. He was secretly proud that he had been out with a girl four days in a row and not once had she slapped him or told him to take a hike. She called him a few times on his bullshit and held him a few times when things they were talking about made him think of Gaul and Abrams and Peter and ... other not nice things.  
  
But she hadn’t told him to get lost. Yet.  
  
When she didn’t come to the door immediately, he tried the handle. It was open and he poked his head around the frame. “ Jenn?” he called into the apartment.  
  
“In the kitchen, come in.”  
  
Rodney came in and took of his shoes (because he’s Canadian), and went into the kitchen. He took his time, looking at the little pieces of Jennifer spread out all over the room. Pencil cases and art books, and fashion magazines with pages dog eared. There was a half-dead houseplant on a windowsill and a little plastic figurine of Lt. Commander Data collecting dust on the top of her playstation.  
  
He wanted to touch these things, to hold them, to remember them. Instil a bit of himself in them. Instead he went over to her giant drafting table and put the flowers he had brought down onto her chair, hiding them so she could be surprised and think of him when he left tomorrow. Then he put his thumbprint in the dust on the VCR and felt territorial and proud.  
  
Jennifer was making brownies in the kitchen. Rodney thought making brownies would be easy – it was just like conducting a science experiment, right? Ingredients and variables.  
  
Rodney totally killed the brownies.  
  
Instead they licked the chocolate batter off of each other’s hands and faces and somehow ended up on the kitchen floor. Jennifer made a joke about him ‘handling her like a quadratic equation’ before Rodney had done something with his tongue that made her shut up.  
  
“I have to leave tomorrow,” Rodney whispered into her ear, still shivering a little with aftershocks. It was possibly the dumbest post-orgasm thing to say, ever, and he mentally kicked himself.  
  
“I know,” she whispered back and turned her head so their mouths could meet. “Will you be gone a whole year again?”  
  
Rodney shrugged. “I don’t know.”  
  
“Okay,” Jennifer said.  
  
“Okay?” Rodney repeated. “Just, okay?”  
  
“Will you leave a mailing address?”  
  
Oh, yes, Dr. Rodney McKay, Science Lab, Atlantis, Pegasus Galaxy. Cause that would work.  
  
“Sure,” he said, and scribbled out the postal address for Cheyenne Mountain on the inside cover of her sketchbook.  


* * *

Six   
  
Rodney had nearly forgotten about giving Jennifer the address by the time the Daedalus came back with its first postal run. Rodney was hiding in the lab, trying very hard to avoid having to be in the same room with either Cadman or Carson.  
  
Carson still went red and stammered every time he saw Rodney.  
  
Well, its not like it had been Rodney kissing him anyway.  
  
Rodney was especially mad at Cadman, because she had made Rodney kiss Katie (who, by the way, didn’t taste like chocolate and coffee) and though Rodney had liked Katie well enough, he had purposefully cancelled on her three times because he had Jennifer.  
  
He thought.  
  
He hoped.  
  
So when the package was dropped onto his work space (and hey, almost on top of the ancient device! Nice aim, dork), he sort of blinked at it. “What’s this?”  
  
“Mail, Rodney,” Sheppard said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which it was, because it was mail, clearly, and it was also addressed to him. There was a note in Carter’s handwriting added to the side that said, “Mail from a girl, McKay?”  
  
Rodney picked up the package and shook it gleefully and noted that the handwriting was Jennifer’s.  
  
Within the hour, Rodney’s office smelled like vanilla caramel, and the geeks (and a few goons) were gathered around the door sniffing the air and whining plaintively.  
  
"My girlfriend,” Rodney’s voice carried down the hall. “Yes, the incredibly hot, incredibly talented illustrator who also happens to make incredible coffee and incidentally loves me, sent me three pounds of Caramel Vanilla pre-ground in a carepackage that just arrived on the Deadalus. So. Who wants to owe me favours?"  
  
Colonel Sheppard, leaning against the wall opposite the office door, wasn’t the least bit surprised when everyone in Atlantis wearing blue immediately sold their souls to Rodney McKay.  
  
All but one. Katie Brown huffed angrily and walked in the other direction.  
  
While the hubbub of fetching cups and filling them was going on in the corner of Rodney’s office with the coffee maker, Sheppard caught Rodney standing in the other corner, popping Hershey’s kisses into his mouth and smiling at a piece of paper in his hand.  
  
Sheppard sauntered over, and noticed that the bag of Hershey’s Kisses had the words “Wouldn’t want to waste it,” written with indelible ink over the clear window. There was also a tin of half-stale home-made brownies, already partially eaten.  
  
“Yes, you can have coffee,” Rodney said without looking up. “I won’t even make you owe me a favour.”  
  
Sheppard grinned. “Cool,” he said. “Whatchya lookin’ at?” He moved to the side so he could peer over Rodney’s arm, prying the paper out of Rodney’s chocolaty fingers. "Aw, Rodney, look. She drew a picture of you as a big old dinosaur eating off the head of a Kavanagh caveman. That`s so cute. It`s a Rodneysaur!"  
  
Rodney’s head shot up and he promptly snatched the letter back and shoved it into his pocket in a ball. He shooed everyone out of his office and drank the rest of the pot of coffee himself.  
  
A few days later, when Sheppard went to pick up Rodney from his quarters because he was late for a meeting, Sheppard saw that the Rodneysaur pictured had been smoothed out carefully and taped to the wall under his degrees.


End file.
